Flood Recovery in Congo Quarter, more ebbs & flows:

If you’ve ever made a sandcastle on the beach and then tried to fill its moat you’ll know that sand does not retain water.  Indeed on a hot day the surface sand on a beach can drain and dry out between each tide.  For beach picnics and sunbathing this is great, but when the expanse of sand in question is covering farm plots 1,000 miles inland in western Uganda, it poses a problem.

If you read my “D-Day” blog article (6/6/13), you’ll know that I’m referring to the massive floods which devastated parts of Kasese in early May and the ensuing dilemmas about how best to help the community of Congo Quarter where the Nyamwamba river destroyed last season’s crops, turned about 1/3 of their farmland into re-routed river, and covered most of the rest of their land in sand, 1m deep in places.  Traditional African rain-fed agriculture is doomed to fail in sandy soil which drains faster than it rains.

After two months of research, consulting experts, thinking, praying, a bit of practical experimentation and another written proposal, I’m glad to be able to tell you that we’ve started a project that will help the 340 residents of Congo Quarter to re-plant their land this season and to get the best out of their sandy soil.  Part of this is about applying some of the improved farming methods with which BMS colleague Alex Vickers has achieved great success with farmers in Gulu, northern Uganda (see http://www.bmsworldmission.org/news-blogs/archive/dignity-dreams-and-development-uganda-food-project-success); notably crop selection, targeted digging, crop spacing, using natural fertilisers, and mulching.  However, the crux of this project is about turning a problem into an asset.  In this case the river Nyamwamba.  Although the river is responsible for so much agricultural destruction, it can also become a source of salvation by providing enough water to irrigate the sandy soil between rains .  Using rivers to irrigate crops is not new.  The success of the ancient Egyptians is probably attributable to their success in harnessing the waters of the Nile, but irrigation is not widespread in Uganda.  Moreover the geography of Congo Quarter makes it difficult to employ fixed irrigation:  farm plots are higher than the river, there are uneven slopes, any ditches would have to be lined to retain water, and the inherent instability of the braided weave river means that it could re-route itself again next season so any irrigation ditches or fixed pumps could be either completely flooded or left dry.  The solution had to be a pump which can lift water 2m from river to bank, push it 100m along a hose to peoples’ plots, be easily set up anywhere along the river bank and not require expensive fuel or non-existent electricity or working-animals to operate. 

Following helpful discussions on Skype with Richard Cansdale, a retired British water engineer who worked extensively with “Rower” pumps in Nigeria and Bangladesh in the 1970s and 80s, we then discovered a newer version of much the same design right here in East Africa; Kickstart’s “Moneymaker Hip Pump”, manufactured and used widely in Kenya and Tanzania and also sold in Uganda and Rwanda.  When combined with an exact list of 42 households in Congo Quarter and the size of plot available for them to farm, compiled by local leaders, this was enough to submit a project proposal to BMS.  I’d like to offer a big thank you to all of you who contributed to the BMS Disaster Relief Fund following our earlier posts about the Kasese Floods.  They come up trumps with a quick grant of £1,250 with which to deliver this project during this planting season, which has just started.  Then all I had to do was make 3 different measuring ropes for accurate crop spacing, purchase a large quantity of seeds of different types and weigh and subdivide them into ¼ acre bags, produce a training sheet and translate it into Swahili (a first for me) and get hold of, and test, the 6 pumps and hoses.  With assistance from the ever helpful Isaiah, we got these jobs done and went to Congo Quarter last Thursday to deliver the pumps and the training.

We delivered the training on the banks of the river with as much practical demonstration as possible.  Holes were dug to reveal the good soil beneath the sand in which to add manure and plant seeds, measuring ropes were used to space hole intervals, and grasses were used to demonstrate mulching.  We rigged up 2 hip pumps by the river, one with longer (100m) and one with shorter (50m) hoses so everyone could try using them.  Pr Alex translated for me and the elected Local Chairmen (LC1 & LC2) were very helpful in the practical demonstrations and dealing with questions and queries, so it was all going well with people amazed at the water pressure generated by simple hand pumps and their potential for irrigating their land.  Pr Alfonse was also with us and as we started to discuss moving from the training to the seed distribution a heated argument arose, mostly in Lukhongo, which I don’t understand.  I must confess that my immediate reaction was to wonder why Alfonse seemed to be provoking trouble during an amicable and successful day.  However, I’ve known Alfonse long enough to know that he’s rarely wrong, has an aptitude for sniffing out discrepancies of which I’m often blissfully unaware, and has the real Christian gift of advocating for the voiceless.  We agreed to postpone the seed distribution until the following week.

There seemed to be two threads to the argument:  One was over the fact that some people had already cleared their land ready for planting, as they had been requested to do by the LC1, while others hadn’t, probably waiting to see with their own eyes the project they’d heard about before committing their labour.  This was easily resolved.  Having seen the pumps in action they know for sure that we are “serious” – a big deal here in Uganda.  They then had a few days to get to work on their land.  The other issue is harder.  The list of names and dimensions of plots we were given was signed and stamped by the LC1, LC2 and LC3, who in Uganda’s highly decentralised system of government, are the locally-elected officials for Congo Quarter at sub-parish, parish and sub-county level.  It is difficult to get a document more official than that, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee its integrity.  One of the local landowners was “proving stubborn” about sharing some of his land with those who had lost their entire plots to the new riverbed as had been previously agreed, and another was alleging that the LC1 and LC2 had put “their people” on the list at the expense of other residents.  Land ownership is complex in Africa, highly politicised, and best not interfered with by white people who have a shameful track record regarding African land.  I had to trust that Pastor Alex and Isaiah could mediate between the local officials and their community members and to pray that God would ensure that a new list could be produced which was honest, accurate and endorsed by everyone involved. 

Thankfully I got the call last night that these issues had been resolved and so we headed back into Congo Quarter today with a big box of seeds for tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and okra, specially selected as locally popular and suitable for sandy soil.  It was wonderful to see a hive of activity with plots that had been cleared in the last few days and other people working hard at digging theirs.  It turned out that there was nothing quite as sinister as had been insinuated last week.  There was some confusion over plots that had been listed under the name of one spouse rather than the other, or accidentally under both names, and also over some plots that were held by people who reside outside Congo Quarter, but have always farmed there.  Suffice to say that it all got cleared up to everyone’s satisfaction and we distributed seeds to 28 households today with the promise to return for another 10 once they’ve prepared their land.

Prayer Requests:

1.      Give thanks for the BMS Disaster Relief Fund and all who contributed to it so that a swift grant was available to help the people in Congo Quarter who have suffered so much.

2.      Give thanks for the clever and affordable practical technologies such as “Kickstart’s” pumps and the chain of websites, conversations, and emails which lead me to them.

3.      Pray for wisdom, commitment and integrity for the local leaders and pastors who have the day-to-day responsibility for making this project work by ensuring equitable access to the pumps, encouraging farmers to use the methods we’ve suggested, and helping the elderly or sick to get their plots cleared and planted in time.

4.      Pray that this project will enable the people of Congo Quarter to regain their farming livelihoods and provide for their families, and that in doing so they fulfil Isaiah 12.3-4 (NIV):

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. 
In that day you will say “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done and proclaim that his name is exalted."

Another 'what a night' exactly one week later! - By Bethan

Last Friday we spent time at the clinic with Jonah (see previous blog post).  Not wanting to be outdone by his second-born, this Friday was Gareth's turn!  Gareth spent from 6pm until 11.30pm on a drip in the clinic because he had had bad diarrhoea and got himself dehydrated.  A mixture of a viral infection (gastroenteritis-type thing) and a worm called giardia worked together to give him all this trouble.  I, apparently, have the giardia worm too.  I worked it out when the Dr said that the worm on its own only causes massive wind ... and I remembered the previous night when I was rolling around in bed trying to get an enormous amount of trapped wind out! ... but the worm together with a virus caused Gareth too much hassle.  It is suspected that he caught this virus from the food prepared at the seven-hour 'fundraising' event he had been to the previous week.  Not washing hands is the main suspect, and food sitting around for hours before eating it.
Always looking for the positive in life, we noticed that as I sat with him in the clinic watching Michael McIntyre on my laptop and the boys were being babysat by our visiting church team, this was the first time we had been out on our own in months!  It was our first uninterrupted conversation since a friend babysat for us in May!
Gareth is now on the mend and just needs feeding up so that he has enough excess to lose next time he gets sick!  We also must mention our wonderful Dr George who runs the local clinic and looks after us so well.

Oh what a night! - By Bethan

Oh what a night!  And unfortunately I don't mean late September back in '63.

Just before midnight last night I took Jonah's temperature, which had been up and down in the last three days getting us through a whole bottle of calpol.  It was more than 38 degrees.  I stripped him off and went back to him twenty minutes later to find it had gone up to 39.  Beginning to panic and with only one more dose of nurofen left at my disposal before I overdosed him, I prayed that God would bring down Jonah's temperature.  I brought him into bed with us and lay his hot little body in between me and Gareth, taking his temperature every five minutes as he fitfully slept.  39.4 ... 39.6 ... 39.8 ... 40!  I packed my handbag and Gareth stuffed all the money he had in it in case I had to take Jonah somewhere for medical help.  I gave Jonah the last dose of nurofen he could have in this 24 hour block and prayed some more.  Now 1 am I began patting him with a wet flannel and fanning him with a paper.  His temperature fluttered between 38 and 39.8 for the rest of the night but I didn't take him anywhere because driving in the night and waiting in waiting rooms full of mosquitoes may have added more problems than we had.  I brought up the name of our Ugandan doctor on my mobile phone and waited for the daylight, mopping Jonah the whole time whilst grabbing an hour's nap at 3 am.
At the crack of dawn (heralded by Samuel shouting "it's light time again!") I phoned our doctor, who used to work in another town during the week but by the grace of God now works full time in Kasese town and was ready to see Jonah at 8.30 this morning with his calm bedside manner and intelligent medical advice, chatting about Wimbledon heroes past and present!  He took some blood from Jonah's 'foot-thumb' (big toe!) and tested it for infections.  No malaria but a probable virus.  Doctor George gave us a full 45 minute consultation helping us understand exactly what he was looking for in Jonah, what we should do if this that or the other happened, and told us to phone him tomorrow night for a follow-up.  Jonah has some anti-biotics in case he has  a bacterial infection but it is probably a virus that will clear up in a couple of days of its own accord.  With all our local friends and some from the UK praying for Jonah he only had one dose of calpol today and his temperature has stayed around a steady 38; cool by comparison.  Please keep praying for him and praise God for the return of such a good doctor in town, Dr George.  We feel so much more confident now in any other medical emergencies that may arise.

My School. By Samuel.

I started school in February.  Can you believe that just at the point when mum and dad were wondering how are they going to manage all their work plus look after Jonah and me, a day-care and nursery opened up on our doorstep!  I'm not exaggerating either: it's a stone's throw from our front gate!  School starts at 8am so daddy gets me breakfast then at 7.55 mummy emerges, somehow fully dressed, she puts my red tartan uniform and sun-cream on me and takes me to school.
When I get to school I always hug my teachers - I'm so happy to see them!  I have a teacher called Happiness!  At least I thought she was called that.  It turns out her name is Agginess (Agnes).  Then my friends all start shouting "Sam-well!  Sam-well!" and I jump up and down and spin, laughing!
Then the teachers say "go to class!" and we all sit down at small tables and look at the blackboard.  We have been learning letters and numbers and we do colouring too.  I call it "shedding" because mummy says I have a dodgy Ugandan accent and what I really mean is "shading"!
When we're not in class I like driving the pink car with yellow wheels around the school.  The school is really a house so the building is small.  We have 32 children and I'm the only white one but that doesn't bother me.  There are twin Indian boys too.  The only difference between me and my friends is that I use a spoon and a table when I eat.  The other children eat with their hands whilst sitting on the floor but because they make such a mess the teachers take their clothes off and they eat in their pants so their uniforms don't get dirty!  We usually eat matooke (boiled plantain) and beans but on Fridays we have meat pilau!  After lunch, at 1pm, mummy or daddy comes to pick me up.  The other children stay until 5pm!  What a long day!
Yesterday we had sports day.  I ran really fast when the teacher said "you run fast!" and she said I was the winner!  But then they made me sit down and rest in the shed (shade!) because they said I was a funny red colour and they were concerned about me!  Later, daddy told them that white people change colour when they get hot; they were so surprised!
Last week was Joram's birthday and he had a party at school.  I stayed into the afternoon so I could join in the party.  The teacher told mummy to pick me up at 2.30pm but when she came with Jonah we were just sitting around in a circle on plastic chairs waiting.  The teachers kept telling us to sit and wait, and I knew there was cake because I saw mummy's friends at Jambo! making it!  So I sat for a while.  But after half an hour or so (on top of the 1 1/2 hours I had waited before mum even arrived!) I got bored.  The teachers were putting up balloons and banners and putting lace tablecloths on the 'head table'.  I started playing 'tag' with some friends on the opposite side of the circle until suddenly six of us children were wrestling in the middle of the circle!  Mummy gave me a 'look' but she said she understood that of course three year olds can't be expected to sit down for three hours (it was now 3.30) with nothing to do so she wasn't too harsh on me.  She was also trying to stop Jonah from being overwhelmed by my school friends!
Eventually, one of the teachers stood up and said "welcome to all you children and adults.  We are going to celebrate the birthdays of Christian and Joram.  Our agenda will begin with a prayer and then we will introduce their friends on the top table, then we will eat the cake and drink sodas, then after a thanksgiving prayer the party will be over and we will go home."
Lunch ended at 1pm for us children.  In the end the party began at 3.50 and ended at 4pm.  It's a good job, since the children waited almost three hours for a ten minute cake fest, that Jambo's cakes are so delicious!

Life in the Mountains

The Bakhongo are predominantly a mountain people, found either side of the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the mighty snow-capped Rwenzori Mountain range as the heart of their ancestral lands.  If you’re going to work with the Bakhongo, it really makes sense that you get into the mountains.  Back in March, Alfonse and I spent 3 or 4 days on a big road-trip around Kasese District visiting most of the 36 Baptist Churches and Preaching Points in the Association.  This involved spending a huge amount of time and diesel in low-range gears and 4WD in the Landcruiser, and a fair amount of time, and copious bottles of water, in 2-leg-drive on foot.  Although it was wonderful to breathe fresh and cool air, to see the beautiful mountain views and to meet and greet so many wonderful people in these churches, some of whom had never been visited by a Mzungu before, or even by the leadership of their Baptist Association; those weren’t the main purposes of the trip.  We came back with pages of notes about the challenges faced by these small and often remote communities:  The list of issues they face is considerable but can perhaps be summed up in 3 words:  Food, Energy and Access – with the latter including physical access to water, firewood, schools, healthcare, markets, legal justice and all the other amenities which are often at least 2 hours walk away, if not more.

As missionaries with access to moderate resources and time there’s not much we can do about the lack of physical infrastructure or the appalling state of the mountain roads.  I’m not an agriculturalist and it would take years of dedicated and specialist work with mountain farmers to implement different techniques for farming on such steep slopes, so we decided our focus would be on providing energy, and on forms of energy that also generate income which the churches can then use to help address some of their other challenges.  Three months and many hours of research and proposal writing down the line, I’m delighted to be able to write that BMS has sent funding for solar projects (like the one we piloted at Kahokya) for 7 more village Baptist churches, and charcoal briquette making projects (like the one piloted in Acholi Quarter) for another 14 Baptist churches.  My challenge over the next 6-12 months is to implement them all!

With my innate wariness, verging on paranoia, of getting stuck on a mountain in heavy rains (which you’d understand if you’d seen the flooding in May or ever slithered a car through Ugandan mud), I decided we’d better start with the most inaccessible churches while it’s still so hot and dry.  Last weekend myself, electrician Amisi, and the ever-trusty Isaiah headed to Kantare Baptist Church to do the first solar installation.  We left Kasese about 8am and drove 60km, mostly on tarmac roads, to Kathasenda Baptist Church where we parked the car and met Pastor Michael and 3 members of his church.  From there we loaded a 60W solar panel in a welded frame, 2 heavy batteries, a wooden control box, various other bits of equipment, 2 coils of wire, a heavy bag of tools, our own clothes, nets and camp-bedding, and about 10 litres of water onto our backs, heads or shoulders and started walking up to Kantare.  On my previous visit with Alfonse we’d taken the longer shallower route up and the shorter but insanely steep route down.  This time the young guy we were following lead us directly up the steepest route for a gruelling 1.5 hour climb.  On arrival at the church we got straight to work bolting the control box to the wall (by punching holes through the mud and then putting U-bolts around the eucalyptus poles which frame the church), bolting the panel in its frame to the roof and then wiring the lights. 

Although we’d carried plenty of water as there is no piped water in Kantare, you never take your own food to an African village.  We were given “breakfast” of coffee and bread at 1.30pm, and lunch of beans and rice at 3.30pm, with a final evening meal at 10.30pm just as were all 3 starting to fall asleep!  The habit of saying grace has lapsed across much of Britain, but I’m always so thankful when I get fed in a Ugandan village, partly because you never know just how much labour or expense has gone into gathering and preparing the ingredients involved (eg someone carrying a sack of rice on their head up a mountain), but also because you never know what you’ll get or at what time, or even whether what you’re eating is in fact your only meal for the rest of the day, or just something to “push you” until a later meal.   Fortunately the hyper metabolism of my youth is gradually slowing with age!

The inevitable crowd of spectators grew through the afternoon as children returned from school (down in the valley, so they climb the mountain daily), and adults from tending their coffee-plots or other crops.  By the time we had the lights working there was an atmosphere of tangible excitement.  The wonders of LED technology mean that two 3W light-bulbs inside the church and another one outside over the door are enough to provide more light than anyone was previously used to with kerosene lamps.  Unfortunately12V phone-charging is proving more problematic.  Just as the first chargers at Kahokya caused us trouble, the same has happened at Kantare.  Cheap Chinese made chargers of the type you plug into a car cigarette lighter are easy to buy here.  Kasese has almost a dozen shops which sell them, and you always test them first in the shop, where they always work.  Sadly they have a habit of not working for much longer after that.  By the time we left on Sunday afternoon there was only one charger still working at Kantare of the four we had taken up with us, which was even more annoying as this time I’d bought more expensive ones on the mistaken logic that they might be more reliable.  Having just preached a sermon which included suggestions of some of the ways that the church could use the income from phone-charging to improve their ministry and serve their community, it was then embarrassing to leave them with only one working charger – and therefore to have to commit ourselves to climb up there again fairly soon to fit some more!  I know I shouldn’t rant about shoddy Chinese manufacturing, but I will because it really annoys me, especially here in Africa where alternatives are not easily available, and where the people who can least afford it are so often ripped off with poor-quality products.  We are considering getting small inverters and then using standard phone chargers at 220V, but that also poses other challenges and more expense.

Ironically although Pastor Michael runs Kantare Baptist Church at the top of the mountain he lives near Kathasenda at the bottom, while his brother Pastor Moses, who is establishing Mailo Kumi Baptist Church and belatedly finishing his secondary education down in the valley, lives near the top of the mountain.  Having carried stuff with us to sleep in the church, we were invited to stay at Pastor Moses’ house, so at about 9.30;pm we gave up fiddling with the annoying Chinese chargers and slithered our way down the steep slope in the dark for about 15 minutes.  Pastor Michael and some others had stayed in the church so the lights were still on, a gratifying white glow which we could see from hundreds of meters down the track, and a fitting reminder of Matthew 5.14-16. 

After all our labours we “slept like lizards” to quote Isaiah, although Pastor Moses woke us in the dark at 6.30 to pray with us before he headed down the mountain to his church.  I confess I barely woke up for this and slept on until the sun shone through the window after 7.  As I blundered out of the house to use the latrine, which offered an amazing view over an almost sheer drop, it was easy to revel in the beauty of the morning with the cool mountain breeze, amazing views, and the clean-toned sounds of Congolese-style guitar playing reverberating off the slopes from a big church down in the valley.  But then I saw an old woman with a hoe on an opposite slope digging away at her crops which seem to defy gravity as they cling to the mountainside.  Then another woman walked past with a 22l jerry-can on her head carrying water up from the small spring half-an-hour down the mountain, and it was not yet 7.30am.  It is easy to romanticise a brief trip into the mountains before returning to my usual world of hot water on tap, a reasonable electricity supply and a car and good roads with which to get to anywhere I need.  However, the reality for those Bakhongo who live up in the mountains is that life is hard work; everything they grow has to be coaxed out of the mountainsides with huge effort and considerable risk, and everything they buy, sell or use has to be carried long distances on steep slopes.  When things go wrong there is no help available other than prayer, and they often feel forgotten and neglected by most of the outside world.

The Bakhongo don’t dance like the Acholi or run like the Karamajong, they may not have the political skills of the Buganda or the cow-herding prowess of the Ankole, but they are a tough people, and I for one have a huge respect for them!

Prayer Requests: 

Give thanks for the BMS funding for the solar and charcoal projects.

Give thanks for the electrical skills of Amisi Kathaliko on which this solar project depends.

Pray that the system at Kantare will keep working reliably and that we can find a practical and affordable solution for the phone-charging, not only for Kantare, but for all 7 Baptist Churches.

Pray for Pastor Michael and his ministry in the mountains.

Pray for our safety as we keep travelling to rural villages by car and on foot.